


Mud Castles

by ashandcas (ashriddle4)



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, M/M, clay and tony are cute af, except I do, general cuteness, im an spn writer idk how i got here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 19:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10668858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashriddle4/pseuds/ashandcas
Summary: Clay and Tony go for a drive together, like they do, like always, except this time, it goes a little differently.





	Mud Castles

**Author's Note:**

> *apologies to any of my spn followers who are confused/disappointed that I'm writing again randomly for another fandom and ignoring long-neglected wips* 
> 
> 13rw folks will understand why I had to get this off my chest. (this was also on my tumblr if you saw it there)

The sun cast a caramel glow over the sleek curve of the Mustang in the driveway. Clay ran light fingers over the paint, and the sun-warmed metal bit at the new callouses just beneath his nails. His therapist had said the guitar lessons might help him process some of his emotions, some of his pain. Most days, she was wrong. But Clay kept showing up and strumming out new, awkward chords for those days when she was right.

With a squeal, the screen door opened and Tony stepped into the receding light. His boots were scuffed and loosely laced, coming up over his jeans. A leather jacket weighed on his shoulders. He’d gotten his hair cut a little shorter after his breakup with Brad, citing new beginnings. 

 _New beginnings,_ Clay thought. _We could use some of those around here._

“What are you doing here?” Tony tilted his head, brow furrowed.

Clay scrunched up his face. “Kinda need a ride.”

Taking a step closer, Tony narrowed his eyes. “Where?”

A grin plucked at the corners of Clay’s mouth and he gave into it. “You could give me the keys and I’ll show you.”

Tony chuckled, shaking his head. “Nice try.”

Clay sighed, his grin replaced by flat-lined lips. “I don’t need a ride, Tony. I just want one. Out of town…” For the most part, Clay managed living in this world, in this painting of a town, where difficult memories stacked on top of each other like thin coats of acrylic. Some days, like today, he let Tony pluck him out of that painting and turn him three dimensional again.

Amusement leaked out of Tony’s face. His brows drew together, and his eyes went soft but focused. “Okay. Yeah, okay. Let’s go.” He clapped a heavy hand on Clay’s shoulder. Motor oil ringed his nail beds and Clay fought an urge to rub the dark lines away.

Tony dropped his hand and opened the Mustang door. Clay, still held in place by a phantom touch, shook himself free of it, then took his place in the passenger seat. As he buckled his seat belt, Tony backed the car out of the driveway. The cassette in the tape player fizzled out a Led Zeppelin guitar riff Clay would never be able to play even in his wildest fantasies. He’d only recently managed a slow, grim “Walk the Line”. Johnny Cash would be embarrassed. Clay would be embarrassed himself if he cared at all about what Johnny Cash would think of him.

When Tony revved the engine, the Mustangs’s vibrations shivered through Clay and he looked over at Tony, who was staring out toward the curve of cracked asphalt ahead of them. 

Gas station sunglasses sat on the bridge of Tony’s nose, not that they looked like he’d gotten them at a gas station. Clay only knew he did because he had been there at the time, on another day like today. 

They’d burnt through the Mustang’s half tank and coasted into a one-pump gas station. Stomach growling, Clay had pilled his arms with beef jerky, Pringles and powdered donuts. Tony stopped by a rotating display and pulled off a pair of aviators with dark lenses and gun-metal frames. He slipped them over his eyes. 

Tony pivoted toward Clay, an uncertain smile tilted on his jaw. “What do you think?”

That moment, that simple, two-cent moment— Tony in sunglasses, in a gas station that smelled like spilled diesel— took this friendship, this thing between them, and, for no discernible reason, stretched and pulled it like melted sugar, into a question mark. Or maybe, Clay thought, it wasn’t their friendship the moment had remolded. Maybe it was Clay that was changing… no, not changing. Revealing. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Yellowstone?” Clay blurted. _Where am I going with this?_

Brow furrowed, Tony shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, when I was like eight. My parents took me to Yellowstone. I was really into animals for a couple years…”

“I remember.”

“Right…um.” Heat diffused across Clay’s face, and he went on ignoring it. “Anyway, we got there in the middle of this huge storm. Kept us inside the lodge pretty much the whole weekend. My parents tried to get me to play board games but mostly I just sat by the window, counting lightning strikes.”

“How many?”

“What?”

Tony smiled— a small thing, all lips. “Lightning strikes. How many were there?”

Clay looked down at his lap, ran a thumb over a hole in his jeans. “Enough I lost count.”

There had been a point to that story, but the Mustang had become too small for him to remember what it was. How could Clay have ever believed there was enough room in here. For him, and Tony—and Tony’s arms and Tony’s hands and Tony’s lips.

“Pull over,” Clay choked out. “Sorry, please. Pull over.”

Tony’s brow pulled together and he gave a curt nod. When the shoulder of the road widened, he wedged the Mustang onto gravel, leaving a tight sliver of space between the mountain. Clay opened the door and squeezed his way outside. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tony said, his voice even. 

Clay shook his head and swallowed, forcing the knot in his throat further down. 

Tony sat down on the hood of his car and cast his gaze to the empty space beside him— an invitation to join. Clay hesitated, but gave in, walking over to the Mustang and hopping onto the hood. He could do it in one motion now but it hadn’t always been that easy. _Practice makes perfect._

Tony said nothing, just sat there, braced back on his hands. Clay kept quiet as well, though there was room for him to say what needed to, if he wanted. Tony always left him that room. But silence had become a part of their friendship, like negative space in a photograph, bringing out the true lines and shapes. 

Clay let out a shaky breath and looked over at Tony. He’d clipped his sunglasses to his shirt, exposing wide, open eyes. Not open like windows though, not like a cliche, they were like doors. Wooden doors with scratched paint and crayon art and a thousand stories for each hand that touched the bronze handle—

“I stopped counting,” Tony whispered. “In class, I used to make marks in my notebook every time fifteen minutes would pass. I’d think all I have to do is get through four fifteen marks and then it was lunch and then I’d just have to get through twelve marks. Ever since… well, ever since Hannah, I stopped doing that.”

Clay nodded. He knew what Tony meant. Seeing death not as this far away thing that happened in movies or to other people or to old people, but as something that hovered close all the time. Coming to grips with that didn’t translate into notebook pages full of blue-ink bucket lists. It made everything move slower. At least, it made you want everything to move slower. Tony said it best. You stop counting. 

Tony reached over, laid a hand on Clay’s shoulder. Something he’d done many times before felt different that night. Like skin touching skin for the first time. Like every other time Tony had touched him before he’d been placing his hand over three inches of dry, caked-on dirt. And now…

That had been the point of the story, Clay realized.

On their last day in Yellowstone, the rain had stopped, the clouds cracking open to reveal creamy blue. And eight-year-old Clay had burst out of the lodge and into big drifts of soaked soil. He spent almost that whole last day trudging in it, plucking out worms and building mud castles. By that night, the dirt had all dried out, and he’d sat on a log under this same caramel light and cracked the shell off his body, bits of gravel and mud and twigs, piece by piece, until he was a boy of skin and flesh and freckles all over again.

That was what he and Tony did for each other— cracked off the old hard shells they’d formed, after years of trudging through the muck and mud of living. There was a word for that kind of thing. There was a touch for that kind of thing too. 

Taking a deep breath, Clay scooted closer to Tony so they touched shoulder to knee, their thighs running like parallel train tracks. Clay bit his lip, leaned his head down to Tony’s, cheek to forehead. 

Tony hissed, his eyes fallen shut as he leaned closer. “ _Clay._ ”

Clay nudged Tony’s nose with his own, then moved in slowly, a fragment of space at time until their lips met and that question mark became a full stop, an exclamation point.

Tony whimpered into his mouth, then kissed Clay back as he slid a warm hand over his cheek and into his hair. Drawing closer, Clay gripped Tony’s jacket, sliding guitar-string callouses over soft leather. His heart rattled, a canary in a cage at the bottom of coal mine. 

There was a word for this kind of thing, and this time, it would go differently.

In the soft space between one kiss and another, it did.

_I love you._

_I love you too._


End file.
